


Paris is Big and We are Small

by holyfant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, French dialogue, Paris (City), Post-Book(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's interesting how it's easy to meet yourself, even in a city of this size.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paris is Big and We are Small

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



> Written for [](http://alley-skywalker.livejournal.com/profile)[**alley_skywalker**](http://alley-skywalker.livejournal.com/) for the [](http://femmefest.livejournal.com/profile)[**femmefest**](http://femmefest.livejournal.com/) exchange. Thanks to [](http://hechicera.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://hechicera.livejournal.com/)**hechicera** for the speedy beta, as always.  <3 French-crit always welcome, as I wasn't able to find a French-picker on short notice.

** PARIS IS BIG AND WE ARE SMALL **

“Oh, let's just go,” Pansy hears her mother say, peeved, and before the goodbye to her father is out of her mouth, the room twists away.

-

The hotel lobby spins into soft-lit cream focus around Pansy and her mother. The nausea from Apparating barely has time to abate before they are being swept off to their rooms by a hotel employee named – how else – Pierre, and who sparks an annoying sort of vague recognition in Pansy.

“Anyzing you need, Mrs. Parkinson,” he sing-songs, French accent needlessly exaggerated.

“That would be sleep right now,” her mother says, smooth and hatefully loveable. “Thank you, Pierre.” 

He bows slightly, and with a wave of his hand has the blinds sliding soundlessly closed. They're clearly enchanted to shut out sound as well: the low roar of traffic from the boulevard below stills.

“Well,” Pansy's mother says, after Pierre leaves them to the stilted silence of the suite, “goodnight, dear.”

Pansy falls asleep to the soft shuffling of house elves in the corridors, and the unfamiliar smell of hotel sheets. It feels like her body hasn't quite caught up yet, and part of her is still standing in their living room in London, looking at her father's dejected shoulders, and thinking about how she doesn't want to go to Paris, not this time.

-

The early morning, at least, holds some of the joy that the first day of every holiday in France used to hold when she was still a child. Pansy leans out of the back window of their hotel suite, the one that overlooks the hotel's garden, a safe enclosure with silver beeches that glow palely in the morning light, and the weak twinkle of fluttering live fairies over the surface of the pond. There is something soft in the slight chill of morning, and it feels like spring is stretching and yawning, though Pansy isn't sure the weather here is in any way connected to the weather on the streets of Paris, where at this moment Muggles will be making their way down to the underground world of the Métro, or speeding along the wide lanes in taxis. She rests her chin on her hand and tries to feel it, that spark of connection that she has always felt whenever she's come to Paris in the past. It's a weak, fluttering thing in the pit of her stomach. Uneasy, as well, as though it feels that it could be different this time.

Two weeks. She wonders what she'll do with it, this pocket of time that feels large and bottomless.

-

“Pansy darling,” her mother says when they cross paths just outside of the suite's bathroom, her face shimmering greenly with a generous dose of _Mademoiselle Marie's Sérum de Jeunesse Perpetuelle_ , “be a dear and get us some breakfast. You know, from that place with the... the... Boulangerie Jean. Near Montparnasse.”

“Yes, okay,” Pansy says, and drifts into the living room to go stand by the window for a moment.

It's easy to forget that her father isn't there, because he would already be out at this hour, anyway, fleeing the tastefully faked intimacy of an expensive hotel room and reading his Daily Prophet in whatever magical coffee shop he can find that serves bourbon in the morning. Never Firewhiskey for her father; he's got that much class, at least. This year, he lurked in the doorway of the living room as Pansy and her mother hooked their little fingers together, getting ready to Disapparate. Pansy watched his face blur out of focus and never asked her mother why he didn't come along; by now it's easier to just not mention it at all. They do a lot of that these days.

With her fingertips, Pansy touches the blinds of the window that overlooks the boulevard and pushes them apart. The sunlight slants hopefully onto the street, washes the far side of it in soft gold. No perpetual spring spell in the garden, then. Something pleasant stirs in Pansy, and she smiles a little. “I think I'll take the bus.”

“You know you can Apparate directly to the shop,” her mother says.

I can, Pansy thinks, but I won't, and then she sighs.

-

The line outside Jean's is long: some tourists with their talking dictionaries out, a French man in with an umbrella under his arm, reading an unmoving Muggle newspaper while his girlfriend holds out her nails for an energetic file to tend to in mid-air, and a group of three giggly middle-aged witches with muddy flannel skirts, cooing over the pastry display in the window in a stocky-sounding language comprising mainly consonants. Inside the shop Pansy can see the backs of at least ten more people, and salespeople in dark red aprons running to and fro, flicking their wands to get the requested items of pastry and bread zooming into the waiting bags.

The magical side of Montparnasse is easier to get into than Diagon Alley, and it happens that Muggles come here by accident. They are usually quickly Obliviated by passing magical folk, and go on to tell their family and friends about how it's all true, how it really exists: that unnamed magical feeling you sometimes get in Paris. Pansy remembers Draco being pouty the one time she brought him along on a French trip – he said it wasn't right, to be so close to Muggles, having to mingle with them whenever one wandered in. She shushed him and took him along on a shoe shopping trip, which cheered him up considerably, but she still never brought him again. She wouldn't tell him, but she quite likes it this way; the magic seeping through the cracks more easily, and the occasional sight of someone slack-jawed, caught in a mind-altering moment, before they are gently wheeled around by a passing wizard or witch, wand at the ready. It makes her shiver to think about the things people might have known once without remembering.

-

“Trois pains au chocolat et trois croissants, s'il-vous-plaît,” she drones, the sentence so worn by use it tumbles out easily, almost without a hint of an English accent.

“Oui, mademoiselle, une minute, les nouveaux croissants sont encore un peu trop chauds,” the girl serving her says rapidly, and it's only then that Pansy looks at her – and she's so unprepared for it that she almost stumbles back into the woman behind her. The girl – she's – Pansy _knows_ her, has seen those large, impossibly blue eyes before, the sheen of that white-blond hair partly concealed by a dark red cap. She's _beautiful_ , in such a shocking way that Pansy feels like someone is squeezing the air out of her lungs, and she remembers feeling that way before: an infuriatingly helpless attraction underscored by breathtaking jealousy.

“I think – aren't you –” she stammers, unaware of what she wants to say, staring at the girl as she twirls the croissants in mid-air with her wand to cool them more quickly.

The girl glances at her, and something in her face shuts down. “Non, je pense pas,” she says decisively, and sends the bag of pastry zooming at Pansy with a little more force than necessary.

It's only when Pansy is back outside, feeling dazed and confused, that she realises that she shouldn't have bought three chocolate buns and three croissants: habit made it slip her mind that it's only her mother back at the hotel, waiting for her.

-

Draco is bleary-eyed and unbothered in the fire. “So?”

“So –” Pansy blusters, “so I was taken off guard by it, okay?”

“Well, they _were_ from France,” Draco says, more sensibly than she's used to from him, and she smiles when his disembodied head sips from a floating cup of what she knows to be hot cocoa.

“It wasn't the champion girl, though,” Pansy says. “Looked like her. But, I dunno. I guess I just... you wouldn't think they'd have to work, would you?”

Draco raises an eyebrow at her. “Yes, because obviously ethereal physical beauty stops you from having to eat.”

If he were here, she'd throw a pillow at his head; sadly she can't risk the hotel burning up, so she just rolls her eyes at him. “Well, they're not strictly human though, are they?”

Draco's face twitches in a suggestion of a shrug, and he takes another sip.

Pansy thinks about how the girl's face went blank in the shop, just after Pansy almost recoiled from her beauty. Pansy thinks about how she saved the extra pain au chocolat and the croissant and ate them carefully after breakfast, sitting on a bench in the hotel garden and not entirely sure how to feel.

-

“Deux pains au chocolat et deux croissants,” Pansy says awkwardly, and feels something tugging at her stomach, like she's missed a step, or gravity is playing a trick.

“Oui,” the girl says, and the impact of her bright blue eyes isn't diminished at all by the messy tendrils of light blond hair escaping the cap and the sweaty flush on her cheeks. Pansy feels a little breathless herself. The shop is full, buzzing with conversation. Jean, the paunch-bellied master-pâtissier is filling up the back of the shop with delicate pastries, bringing rushes of hot air with him every time he comes through the revolving door that leads into the baking area.

“I – er –” Pansy says, then takes courage. “Have we met before?” 

The girl pauses, a chocolate bun halting in mid-flight. “Je sais pas,” she says slowly, but her face is clear and careful, looking Pansy over. “English?” she asks then, narrowing her eyes. “'Ogwarts?”

Throat pinched closed too tightly for a response, Pansy just nods.

“Ah, oui, c'est possible,” the girl says. “Fleur Delaceur, Triwizard champion, she is my sister. I was in one of the tasks.”

Right. Pansy remembers now, even if was more than seven years ago: the quest that had Harry Potter as the hero as usual, rescuing a young silvery-haired girl from the lake. It seems like a long time ago, and the strangest thing is that the world they're standing in right now isn't even that different from the world then, regardless of everything that happened inbetween.

The girl smiles slightly, a twitch of rosy lips and a hint of white teeth, and the cliché of it isn't nearly enough to overcome the fluttering of Pansy's heartbeat. 

“What's your name?” Pansy asks, as she reaches over the counter to take the pastry bag.

For a second, it looks like she's not going to answer, but then the girl leans in a little and says, low: “Gabrielle.”

Pansy stands there for a moment, warm and ticklish with the pleasure of this knowledge, that somehow feels like a victory.

The girl's mouth twitches. “And you?”

“I – uh – Pansy,” she manages, and then stands for another ten seconds, just looking at Gabrielle, at the curl of amusement in the corner of her mouth, until the patrons behind her start rustling and clearing their throats with impatience. “Right,” she says, and gathers the bag of pastry. She doesn't look over her shoulder as she hurries out of the shop, because something in her has caught flame, a small chip of tinder long overlooked, and she knows it's impossible Gabrielle didn't see its spark.

-

Gabrielle comes out of the heavy back door of the boulangerie at a little past three in the afternoon, running her hands through her long, silver-shiny hair. Her shoulders have a tired look, and as Pansy watches her from the café terrace she's sitting at, Gabrielle presses a palm to her forehead in clear exhaustion. In the liquid light of the tentative spring day, she's radiant – literally glowing, which is a word that belongs to the bad romance novels about defiant young witches and brave powerful wizards Pansy liked to read as a girl, not to reality. But Gabrielle is standing there, apparently just breathing for a moment, pulling at the light.

Pansy touches the handle of her dainty coffee cup, and looks at Gabrielle from between her lashes, estimating the distance between them and suddenly not very sure what her plan was, exactly.

But Gabrielle seems to be looking for something, looking around the street, and then there is the terrible-terrific plunge of what appears to be Pansy's heart when Gabrielle looks at the terrace, and smiles a smile that is stunning even at that distance, and waves – elegant, heart-stopping, how else could it be. She walks over with an air of dignified confidence that has Pansy drawing in a hard breath. Gabrielle walks straight to her table and without even asking for anything just pulls out a chair and sits down. Pansy almost laughs at the way the conversation at the tables around them stills, then starts up again after a few seconds. 

“'Ello,” Gabrielle says, and slumps back in the chair, the line of her torso going slack, her long legs stretching under the table. She pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes.

“Er, hi,” Pansy says after a pause, head still reeling a little and feeling like someone's pulled the plug on the world and the ground beneath her feet is tilting slowly, everything sliding and pooling towards one point of gravity, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

“You waited for me,” Gabrielle says without removing her hand.

There's no use denying it, but Pansy can't think of any way to confirm without sounding desperate or creepy. So she brings her coffee cup up to her lips and drinks.

“Je suis... très fatiguée,” Gabrielle says, and finally lets the hand drop, so her face is unobscured. Pansy looks at her, throat tightening at the implausibility of her beauty.

“I understand,” she says awkwardly.

“But we can go somewhere quiet,” Gabrielle continues, and taps her cheek in thought. Then, suddenly, she looks Pansy straight in the eye. “If that is what you want.”

Pansy takes the decision consciously, with a feeling of certainty that she hasn't felt in a long, long time. “Yes,” she says, and weathers the almost unbearable brilliance of Gabrielle's smile from this close.

-

It starts to rain halfway through the afternoon, the wavering spring light giving way to chilly rain and fast-moving clouds. Gabrielle walks briskly, avoiding the puddles forming on the wide pavements, leading Pansy over broad boulevards and into narrow alleys, past hidden magical corners and enormous Muggle architecture. She talks little, which makes Pansy slightly uneasy. Gabrielle buys a bottle of wine in a seedy Muggle store where the shopkeeper devours her with his eyes and words, and Pansy has her wand halfway out of her pocket without thinking, and Gabrielle grabs her wrist to stop her. It's the first time they touch and Pansy's body jumps with it, the sudden contact of Gabrielle's long fingers around the skin of her wrist. Gabrielle's face is close, and she's looking at Pansy in an inscrutable way for a long, long moment.

“Mais qu'est ce que vous faites, êtes-vous –” the shopkeeper says harshly, and Gabrielle lets go of Pansy's wrist. She's smiling now.

Pansy Obliviates him without further thinking, and takes a second bottle off the rack without paying, feeling an incredible urge to laugh.

“That was kind, Pansy,” Gabrielle says when they're back on the street. She pronounces it a little funny, _Pan-zee_ , sharper at the end, softer in the middle.

“He was undressing you with his eyes,” Pansy says, frowning.

“I am used to it,” Gabrielle says flippantly, but when Pansy looks at her her expression is tight.

They walk for a moment in silence. “What's... what's it like?” Pansy finally asks, awkward.

Gabrielle looks up at the wet dirt-coloured sky. “It's like... everyone sees, you know? But no one wants to really know my name.” She looks back down, at Pansy, and smiles. “Apart from you,” she adds, like it's nothing, and then touches Pansy again, a light touch of wet fingertips to the thin fabric of Pansy's sleeve.

-

“Look,” Gabrielle says quietly, and points with the wine bottle, “the lights are coming on.”

Pansy looks up. Her heels sink further into the mud under her feet, and she almost feels like laughing at the feeling of the earth pulling at her. Her mother, in the morning, had said _You can't be serious, darling_ , those? _Don't be silly._ and of course Pansy had put them on, frail and light and impractical, with a bow on the side. They're ruined now, by rain and mud and uneven cobblestones – it feels good in a stomach-ache kind of way. The large triangle of the Eiffel Tower, at the end of the park, flickers red, then gold again; the rain around it suddenly comes alive with reflection. The tower wears the wet like a halo. It's like it's only raining on the far end and the rest of the world is quiet and dry, just watching in. It's cold. Most other visitors in the city are probably eating in Quartier Latin right now, shaking their head at the rain, Pansy supposes, or back at the hotel, rubbing their tired feet. 

There must be people on the tower even now, in this weather. Pansy can't imagine that what they see is worth it.

“It isn't beautiful at all,” she says, and cocks her head at the hard, bombastic spectacle of iron and light (Muggle magic, she thinks, then frowns at the vulgarity of the thought). 

Gabrielle takes a swig of the wine and looks up at the wet, dark sky. The water-free bubble she's cast around them isn't perfect, and her hair is damp, soaking up some of the light sparking off the Eiffel tower. 

“I think it is,” she says, and when she looks at Pansy there's a challenge in her eyes that must be a response to something else than what Pansy said.

“It's a big lump of cold metal,” Pansy says. “Nothing elegant or lovely about it.”

Gabrielle laughs. “What is beautiful about elegance or... how you say, loveliness, Pansy?”

“It's –” Pansy begins, then feels confused. “Elegance _is_ beauty. Beauty _is_ lovely. That's its... that's its definition, wouldn't you say?”

“I would say _nuzzing_ ,” Gabrielle says, with a sudden heavy accent. She's smiling, but not in an entirely joyful way. “Everyone else talks to me about beauty. I 'ave never seen it in any of the things people say are beautiful.”

Pansy wants to say _but you are so beautiful, that's why people can't help it_ , but something in her tells her not to. “Where do you see it, then?” she asks instead.

“Everywhere else,” Gabrielle says, and makes a vague gesture around them – mud, strips of concrete, straggles of wet tourists, a huge triangle of silent metal that sparks like a carnival bonfire. Pansy. Her mud-spattered, ruined shoes, her hair that must look like a bird's nest.

“People have never told me I was beautiful,” Pansy blurts out.

“That is because people are always – how you say – _distracted_ by what is more... easy for the eyes,” Gabrielle replies, haltingly, and passes Pansy the wine bottle, rain-slippery, and Pansy closes her eyes against the dark, deep taste of it, and imagines she can taste Gabrielle's lips, somehow.

-

“You will need breakfast tomorrow, yes?” Gabrielle asks when Pansy tells her she should get back to her hotel.

“Likely,” Pansy affirms, smiling.

-

“Darling,” Héloise says when Pansy comes through the door, dizzy with the Apparating and the memory of Gabrielle's hair glinting in the gaudy Eiffel tower lights. “I thought – oh, do take off your shoes, terrible, didn't I tell you? - I thought we were here on a _family holiday_.”

“So did I,” Pansy says, and, balancing on one foot, pulls sharply on the heel of one of the shoes, before dropping it on the carpet, splashing mud onto the innocent, oblivious cream.

-

“Well, you are not a child,” Gabrielle says, unbothered. The sun is out again, peeking over the white edges of friendly-looking clouds. They're sitting at the same terrace Pansy sat for hours the day before, wondering at herself, and Gabrielle is braiding her hair with incredible ease, the strands just sliding together like they were made for it. 

“I came here with her, didn't I?”

“Ah, yes, but why?” Gabrielle says, and stops braiding. Her gaze is keen.

“It's tradition,” Pansy shrugs.

“It's tradition because she would like you to be a child forever,” Gabrielle says, and she sounds pleased, maybe at uncovering something that sounds like the truth. It's not entirely okay, because Gabrielle doesn't know anything about Héloise, or about Pansy's dad, and how lonely Héloise always said it was when Pansy was at Hogwarts, and how Pansy searches and searches and still can't find the courage to find her own place, even if most Pureblood witches of her age are getting ready to pick suitors from line-ups and pretend it's not their parents' politics they're confirming or trying to deny in these uncertain ideological times.

“I'd rather be out with you,” Pansy says.

“Eh bien,” Gabrielle responds, and her smile is brilliant and wide. “Voilà une adulte.”

-

They walk for a while in a small, charming park that has a gate as an entrance where a warden in a blue uniform gently steers confused-looking Muggles away. Wizarding children shriek joyfully in French and play with a grumpy-looking baby Kneazle. The benches are wet and steaming a little in the sudden courage of the sunshine.

“So do you live here in Paris?” Pansy asks Gabrielle.

“For the moment, yes,” Gabrielle says. 

“What about school?” It's March. Pansy can't imagine Beauxbatons has such a different calendar from Hogwarts that it can allow their students to work at boulangeries in March.

“I... how you say. _Took a break_ ,” Gabrielle says, unbothered.

Pansy looks at her in wonder, but a different kind than usual. “Just like that?”

“Ben ouais,” Gabrielle says, and shrugs. “I can always go back next year. It will be my last, anyway.”

It seems silly, but Pansy would never have thought in her time at Hogwarts that just _taking a break_ was an option, nor would she probably have been able to think of something to do instead of school. And then in her seventh year so many things happened that basically took the break for them, and pushed them and divided them and made school something secondary. 

“And your family?”

“Maman wasn't pleased.” Gabrielle smiles brightly. “But she knows that I am careful. Fleur was in favour of it. She lives in England now,” she adds, and there is something in her tone that is hard to decipher. Pansy looks at her, and wonders what it means to Gabrielle to have someone who is just as extraordinarily beautiful as her, but who is a few years ahead of her, opening all the doors, shaping the paths. Maybe there is something there of the reason that Gabrielle is here, and not at school. 

“So now you work for Jean.”

“Yes. He accepted me at once.”

“I can imagine why,” Pansy says, but regrets it as soon as Gabrielle turns towards her, eyes narrowed.

“He's family, actually,” Gabrielle says. “He knows I like pâtisserie. He teaches me.”

“Yes. I'm – I'm sorry,” Pansy fumbles. 

Gabrielle softens again, and then looks away, following the spectacle of the children now chasing the Kneazle with her eyes. Pansy wonders, for a fleeting moment, what would happen if Gabrielle were to get really, really angry. Would she...

Gabrielle turns back to her, eyes blue and beautiful, but smiling, and so human, her hair buttery gold but not impossible under the soft sun, escaping from its braid – and the thought falls silent on its own.

“In fact,” Gabrielle says, as though responding to some telepathic conversation, “I should show you.”

-

“Et la chose la plus importante, c'est la croûte, bien sûr,” Jean says contentedly, hands resting on his huge aproned belly, watching Gabrielle wielding her wand with a flickering, blue-hot flame at the tip of it. “Parce que ça doit être _magique_ ,” he says, and winks at Pansy, who can't help but smile at him.

“Oui, je sais, papou,” Gabrielle says happily, and she looks at Pansy with glinting eyes. “You should do it, Pansy.”

Pansy takes the little silver spoon Jean conjures out of thin air, and approaches the elegant bowl of crème brûlée with the caution of one approaching a tiger. Gabrielle's tinkling laugh makes her look up; Gabrielle is flushed and smiling. “It's not going to eat _you_ , Pansy!”

The crackle when the tip of her spoon breaks the caramellised sugar crust has all three of them breathing out in pleasure.

“Oui,” Jean says, eyes closed. “ _Parfait_.” 

And it is. Gabrielle is beaming. Pansy digs out a spoonful of cream, and slowly licks it from her spoon, marvelling at the richness of the taste. Jean conjures another spoon, gives it to Gabrielle, and with a fat wink at the both of them moves away to another part of the pâtisserie section.

“J'espère que tu sais,” Gabrielle says, voice pitched low, “que la nourriture est un prélude à l'amour pour les Français.”

Pansy swallows, wide-eyed. “I don't... speak French,” she says, but is unable to suppress a nervous grin.

Gabriel laughs again, a sound like freedom. “Yes you do,” she says, and leans in to kiss Pansy, her mouth supple and soft and sticky with sugar.

-

“Pansy dear,” her mother says, tapping the teapot with her wand so it starts pouring the tea of its own accord. “Will you please take me with you today to wherever it is you've been going?” 

Pansy sits up, wincing in anticipation of this conversation. “Mother, it isn't... it's a school mate, okay? Someone I ran into. We're just spending some time together. She knows Paris well.”

“Who, then?” Héloise asks mildly, but her eyes are sharp.

“Well, not a school mate as such,” Pansy backpedals. “She's a Beauxbatons student. We – we met during the Triwizard tournament.”

“Ah.” 

Pansy looks at her mother, beautiful, strong, lonelier than ever without even a silent husband with a bourbon behind a newspaper in a corner. “But I can go out with you today,” she says. “We can go visit the Louvre again, if you want. That exhibition about Egyptian magical artefacts the Muggles don't understand and create all those stupid theories around, you like that one, right?”

Héloise's smile is soft and unfolds slowly. “Yes, Pansy. I would like that.”

-

“I like it,” Pansy says simply, a week later, looking at the chipped wooden closet and the flaky-painted walls, with a single moving poster on them (Audrey Hepburn winking and smiling knowingly, twirling her wand that she always disguised as a cigarette on a long holder).

“No you don't,” Gabrielle says, and kisses Pansy backwards, until they're on Gabrielle's bed, sloppily made and thinly mattressed; they have to pause to giggle their way through spelling the bedsprings silent and Pansy isn't sure how to do any of this, but she slides her hands over every part of Gabrielle that Gabrielle uncovers as she undresses, and feels blessed with every new bit. She marvels over the curves of Gabrielle's breasts, that are less perfect than she would have expected in fantasy; the slight droop of them makes them all the more perfect to hold, spilling into her palms like willing gifts. Gabrielle kisses her until she feels like she can't see anymore, can't hear anymore, can only feel and touch and taste and be unable to separate any of them. The sunlight is pale outside and it falls onto Gabrielle, and is made stronger there, rendered more lovely by the sheen of her skin that pearls with sweat as Pansy kisses her way between her thighs. 

“T'es,” Gabrielle pants, fisting her hands into Pansy's hair, “t'es _extraordinaire_.”

No, that's you, Pansy thinks, but somehow it feels right, too – that Gabrielle should see it, and find it in a place where Pansy never thought anyone would.

-

One night, Héloise is sitting in the suite's living room when Pansy gets back to the hotel.

“Hello,” Pansy says, sated with lingering warmth and satisfaction, toeing off her shoes carefully.

“Hello,” her mother returns warmly. She's wearing a silk bathrobe and has her hair half pinned up. She looks more beautiful than Pansy can remember her ever looking. “I'm really glad you're having so much fun here this year, Pansy.”

Pansy stands, holding one shoe in her hand. “I... Yes, I'm... it's good.”

Héloise smiles. “Do you want to listen to the wireless together? There's a report from the Grand Magical Gala in Monaco tonight.”

“Yes,” Pansy says. “Yes, I'd like to.”

-

“Will you cut my 'air?” Gabrielle asks the evening before Pansy and Héloise are going back to England, from where she's sprawled out on her bed, smiling an innocent smile that is at odds with the large, sharp-looking pair of scissors she's holding out towards Pansy.

“Why?” Pansy asks, but takes the scissors almost automatically.

“Ils sont trop longs,” Gabrielle says and makes a face. “People are always... looking at it.”

Pansy is struck silent with surprise for a moment. “Are you serious? Do you want to get rid of your hair?”

“Yes,” Gabrielle says simply.

“Are you really... I don't... why don't you do it yourself? Just bewitch the scissors.” Pansy looks at it in her hand, and then at Gabrielle, whose hair is spread out like a halo over the bedspread.

“I want you to do it.”

Pansy actually really doesn't want to – Gabrielle's hair is gorgeous, is world-altering, should be preserved and worshipped. “Are you sure?”

“Oui,” Gabrielle says, eyes defiant.

Pansy reaches out with a hand and touches the silky golden-silver tresses next to Gabrielle's cheekbone: they are light and smooth to the touch. She moves her hand up and cups Gabrielle's head, marvelling at the almost slippery-soft slide of the hair and the shape of Gabrielle's skull under her fingers. Gabrielle leans into the touch, so Pansy uses the pads of her fingertips to touch her a little more directly, drawing small circles on her scalp. “But I really like your hair,” she whispers. Gabrielle's face is closer than it was. When she opens her eyes, the impossible blue of them almost makes Pansy jump.

“I don't,” Gabrielle says. “C'est clair que je suis...” She shakes her head a little against Pansy's fingers, switches languages. “I want to be less, how you say? So people won't see me.”

Pansy huffs a laugh. “You say that, while every other woman on the planet would like to be you, and would like to stand out like you do.”

“They 'ave no voice,” Gabrielle says, a little enigmatically. “I do not want it anymore. Please?”

Pansy looks at her fingers tangled in those divine, shining tresses. She thinks of her mother, passing her in the morning, face green with magical youth from a bottle, and her father and his glass of bourbon hidden behind the Daily Prophet. Héloise saying _don't be silly, dear. You can't go out looking like that. At least make an effort._ Gabrielle's eyes shuttering into blankness when Pansy got hit over the head with her beauty the first time and nearly staggered backwards, so physically affected it was nearly impossible to speak.

“Okay,” she says, suddenly sure. “I'll do it.”

Gabrielle sits up, eyes full of light. “Vraiment?” she asks, as though she really weren't expecting it.

“Well, yes, if it's what you want,” Pansy says, and holds the scissors in her open palm. They're heavy. 

“Merci, Pansy,” Gabrielle says quietly, and after a second in which she just looks at Pansy, she turns around so Pansy is facing her back, and the glorious waterfall of shiny hair that falls to below her mid-back.

“How short do you want it?” Pansy says, stepping close.

“Short,” Gabrielle says. “You can choose.”

Carefully, Pansy runs her fingers through Gabrielle's hair a final time; it's knot-free and feather-soft and absolutely otherwordly. She thinks she understands. 

She positions the scissors a little over Gabrielle's shoulders. “Ready?” she breathes.

“Oui,” Gabrielle responds, voice low and serious.

Pansy takes a breath, then makes the first cut, careful and slow. Strands of metallic-golden hair fall to the ground, and Gabrielle makes a soft sound – surprise, or shock, or pleasure, or all of them.

Pansy snips away, careful to keep the line of the scissors straight. On the floor, the fallen hair shimmers. Gabrielle doesn't speak, but Pansy can hear her breath. 

“Done,” she finally says, hoarsely. Gabrielle twists around to look at her. Despite the inexpertise of the haircut her hair looks immaculately groomed and modelled as always, except that it now stops a bit above her shoulders; it suits her the way her hair will always suit her, because it isn't quite normal, this hair, but she does look different. Fresher, maybe. A little older.

“It's lighter.” Gabrielle smiles, and gets up. Pansy expects her to cross over to the mirror to see what she looks like, but instead she steps into Pansy's space and stoops down a little to kiss her cheek, lingering and warm.

“Merci,” she whispers. “ _Merci_.”

Pansy runs her fingers through the shorter hair, and marvels as always at its softness. “You're welcome,” she responds, and leans into Gabrielle.

“Will you not go?” Gabrielle asks into Pansy's hair, a little mysteriously, but Pansy think she knows what she means. “You could do whatever you want. Paris is big and we are small.”

Pansy can't help but smile. “I'll be back,” she says, sure. Secure.

“I will 'old you to it, so be careful,” Gabrielle says, and hugs her closer.

-

When Pansy steps outside the door of the house that Gabrielle's room belongs to, a small miracle in a dingy magical back street, she turns around on an impulse – to look up at the window that she knows is shielding Gabrielle from the rain, maybe, or maybe for another reason.

At any rate, it brings her face to face with the _CHAMBRES A LOUER_ poster on the door, that's been adorned with crude moving pictures by passing drunks coming back from the Montparnasse pubs.

-

“Pansy,” Héloise calls when she comes home from a shopping trip, “are you packed? I'd like to Disapparate in half an hour!”

Pansy gets up from the sofa to meet her mother. “Yes, I'm packed,” she says. “But mother, I think we might want to have a talk when we're back home. With father as well.”

Her mother looks at her with a raised eyebrow.

“There are things I want to do. I'm not a child anymore,” Pansy says, and for the first time, she feels it. She really does.


End file.
